Penny Dreadful Dreams
by Alien-Ariel
Summary: Having destroyed his chance to remain in Paris, Erik moves to London. Either from necessity or fancy, he finds himself haunting another Opera. And another girl; one very different from Christine. Can he admit his ability to love a girl such as Molly? E/OC
1. A Simple Life

**Ok everyone! This is what I've been talking about for the past few days.**

**If you are new to my story (as I've changed the section I label under), don't worry about anything and just read on.**

**If you are returning to my story from what was **_**Little Vipers/Pandora, No More**_**, I advise you just enjoy this. Because it's gonna be good!**

**ALSO, PICTURES OF MOLLY, ELIZA, AND ADIN ARE ON MY PROFILE! Please take a moment to view them, as I do little in the ways of description.**

**This is just a short intro. Next chapter will be normal sized (probably out within a week).**

**Anyway, tell me what you think. And enjoy!**

My life _used_ to be simple. Well, as simple as a life in the opera career could be.

I would wake up in the ballet tower with the fifty-plus other ballet rats to the dulcet tones of the jabbering, soon-to-be drunk stagehands, who would try to cop a feel on some bleary eyed girls on their way to the stage. Screaming and giggling, they'd slam their doors to the hallway shut. Eliza and I would try to change into our white skirts and Pointe shoes in privacy and quiet while this happened (we'd learned to keep our door locked at night).

Once dressed, we'd all rush at once down the splintering old staircase to the backstage for rehearsals. Our young and incompetent ballet mistress would try to teach us something new, or correct our poor performance; but this was mostly a farce. We never got better. Most of the ballet rats didn't care to amend the weak corps we historically were. I couldn't really blame them, but Eliza hated our peers for it.

Deciding there was nothing more she could pretend to do with us, Ms. Lucy would turn us loose on the labyrinth of the Century Opera House. Most of us girls of the legal age and above would pair up with a stagehand and find a shadowed corner, while the young ones would try to be a nuisance and generally be underfoot.

Eliza and I were some of the few exceptions, as we mostly stayed on the stage to watch the talented part of the cast; we never messed around with the lusty stagehands and kept to ourselves. Unless we wanted to pester Adin while he tried to keep up with brawny boys.

Life was simple. Life was easy. But Life was also meaningless.

And then _he _came.


	2. The Resident Specter

Ok, here's chapter 2! It's out sooner than I thought, but the next one might still be 1-2 weeks (I have a lot of tests coming up soon).

**Sorry if it reads a little cumbersome and has too much information too soon, but I'm just trying to introduce the characters and give you Molly's history so you can have some perspective on her.**

**Thanks to Pearlmaidenredskyla for her review. I'm glad to see you back!**

**Tell me what you think, and enjoy!**

I'd always wanted, since childhood, to be sucked into the numerous stories I would read. As a small girl, I liked my fairytales the best. Stories of princesses in distress, the gallant knights that came to their rescue, and the hideous beasts that got in the way of their love occupied a significant portion of my time as a child. I would go on to graduate to Penny Dreadfuls, the cheapest form of publications available. I would use my modest salary from being a ballerina on any volume I could find of any story. It didn't matter if I read the volumes of a certain story out of order, because they were all the same: adventure, sword fights, strange locations. It was all magical to me. And how I still wish, to this day, to be a part of that magic. If only I knew the way.

"Somewhere else you'd rather be, Molly McLoughlin?" I heard Ms. Lucy say through my distant daydreams. I wasn't surprised by her severe tone, for the young ballet mistress still held onto some semblance of an ego and was prone to occasional outbursts at faraway girls. However, I _was_ rather affronted because, yes, there was somewhere else I'd be right now if the choice was mine.

"Excuse me, ma'am." I said pointedly but with the utmost care and courtesy. She seemed appeased and continued to run our drill, if you could so loosely term whatever it was we were doing on the stage "drill". I shared a look of deep meaning with my best friend, Eliza Fairchild; we were both heads of our separate lines, her's just in front of mine. It was without difficulty that we communicated during rehearsals.

Eliza had been my only friend in the ballet corps since we were little girls. She had been shoved into the Century Opera House at the age of four by her strict, no-nonsense parents; the arts were very important to the see-and-be-seen Fairchild family. And Eliza was expected to have every honor as a ballerina, as she had no brothers or sisters to compete with. Rather infertile, Mrs. Fairchild had delivered Eliza prematurely and was advised never to try to conceive again. Amazingly, Eliza turned out to be a vivacious and lively thing, though very thin and with some minor health issues.

I remember the first time I met her quiet clearly. I had come to the Opera at the age of seven to be a ballerina; my parents are natives of Ireland and thus loved dance and song. Not having much of a voice at seven, I was admitted to the ballet corps. At the time I had three siblings (bit I have come to have five at my current age of twenty one), and I was used to my familial bonds. Expecting to find something similar in a friend at the Opera, I was quickly disappointed.

Most of the other girls were a few years older than me, and would tease me incessantly about my carrot-orange hair, my pale complexion, and the numerous freckles dotting the bridge of my nose. Once I spoke though, they found it much funnier to mock my strange way of forming words. I'd lived my whole life in England, and thusly learned a British accent, but my parents and oldest brother had such thick Irish accents that I'd picked up on that as well. The result was a mess of some British and some Irish, which could sound rather charming when I was under control. But these girls laughing at me and making fun of me turned my speech into a cacophony of sound.

I remember running to my room that first day with my hands firmly over my mouth, as though that alone could take back all my strangely spoken words. I closed the door to my closet-like dorm behind me and sank down to the floor. My knuckles were white from the pressure with which I held onto the tulle of my skirts.

"They said mean things to you, didn't they?" I heard a soft voice speak through my gloom. Opening my eyes, I saw a girl my age sitting on her bed. She had long, straight hair of the darkest black and narrow, ice blue eyes like mine. I nodded.

"They always say mean things. They call me _scrawny_." The girl glared at the floor and I heard her mumble, "I'm _not_ scrawny" with a childish pout. I sat there silently, willing my mouth to stay firmly shut.

"What did they say to you?" She asked me, looking back at me with thin eyebrows relaxed from her glare. I just shook my head, "Can't you talk?" I shook my head again, but with undisguised fear. The girl seemed to understand, because she carefully slid nimbly off her bed, barely making a sound, and came to kneel in front of me.

"Yes you can." She said quietly, "You can't stop talking because of them."

"Why not?" I whispered feebly, my voice a mess of conflicting accents. I went to cover my mouth again, eyes wide, but the other girl just caught my hand and smiled at me sweetly.

"You can't ever let them win." She replied. I found myself returning her smile.

"I'm Molly."

"Eliza."

We've been distanced from the rest of the ballet rats ever since. We had garnered a reputation of being cold and rude, but that's only a defense mechanism to keep them all away. We're still those sweet little girls that bonded over a very real hurt, and found a win in the lose.

Rehearsals ended soon after Ms. Lucy scolded me, which was a blessed relief. I was very embarrassed to have been singled out like that. Eliza noticed how distracted I was as we changed out of our skirts and Pointe shoes.

"You aren't embarrassed about that insufferable woman snipping at you, are you Molly?" She asked as she unlaced her shoes and set them under her cot.

"Of course not." I said calmly, trying to keep my accent under control. When it flew away from me, she could tell I was lying.

"Molly." She said as I tried to get into my day dress.

"Oh come on, wouldn't _you_ be?" I asked defeatedly as I finally slipped my head through the neck hole. My copper hair was as frazzled as I was, and Eliza just laughed quietly at me.

"Brush your hair." She advised as she too put on her day dress. I sighed and turned towards my vanity. I ran a comb through my hair to straighten it out. I sat there, looking at my shoulder-length locks, idly running my fingers through it, as if willing it to grow to Eliza's beautiful, womanly length.

"Leave it be." Eliza said in her soft voice while clipping my hair up in a ponytail and tying a ribbon around my neck, "You're beautiful just as you are." I had to hug her for that.

Similarly, like when I first met Eliza, I would forever remember my first encounter with the "Resident Specter" in vivid clarity.

The same day as my incident with Ms. Lucy's ego, the entire company was to have a brief meeting. This was typical of the night before a performance; our manager, Mr. Arthur Clarke-Harris, enjoyed gathering us all together whenever possible so he could keep us from what we actually needed to do. Or at least, that seemed to be the only reason for these impromptu meetings in which nothing was accomplished.

Eliza and I sat on the right side of the auditorium while the crew, cast, and ballet girls filled in the center front rows. No one ever bothered us at these company meetings, on the exception that Adin Karley, our stagehand friend, was allowed to break away from the constant attention of his older brother Oz.

But today we were alone, so we just chatted about the performance tomorrow and how bad the ballet in Act II was going to be; by some massive and characteristic oversight, Ms. Lucy had only gone over this particular scene once with us before she swiftly forgot about it to rehearse the easier ballet in the following Act. Eliza, of course, was furious about it and had made damned sure she and I at least knew our parts. She was a slave driver when the mood suited her; my feet were still a little sore. I couldn't wait for the day that she became Prima Ballerina, because she would work so hard.

Mr. Clarke-Harris finally bustled onto the stage to join Mr. Darlington, our musical director, Mrs. Ipswich and her husband, the vocal directors, Maurice Featherby, the chief scene setter, and Ms. Lucy. I really don't know why any of them bothered to be up there except Mrs. Ipswich, because she was the only one who made decisions. A real force to be reckoned with, she was stern and downright hostile to anyone who couldn't keep up. She alone had forged the good name of our cast; the Century Opera House's singers were second to none, which would be why I'm still stuck in the ballet. Eliza saw me looking a little wistfully in the direction of Yelena Cheremisinova, our Russian lead soprano.

"How are your voice lessons going?" She asked in my ear as Mr. Clarke-Harris babbled on. I sighed.

"Not as quickly as I'd have hoped. I still don't think I'm ready." I admitted quietly.

We paused for a moment when Mrs. Ipswich struck her hands together once in a definite, resounding clap to call for silence. The ballet girls had been giggling and whispering to each other at the late appearance of our foremost benefactor on the stage beside the other officials. Neither Eliza nor I blushed, because this young, handsome man that had stolen the hearts of nearly every ballet rat and chorus girl happened to be my oldest brother Sean. He was tall and rugged, with my same flaming hair; but the Irish lilt of his voice, which made me an object of ridicule when woven with my British accent, made girls positively swoon over him.

My family is not wealthy. Sean had come into his own fortune while working under the apprenticeship of an elderly master mason as a boy. When the man learned of his terminal illness, he set into a motion a plan for Sean, his most eager and promising student, to inherit his entire business. Sean's unstoppable desire to live up to his master's expectations and his own architectural genius have turned a small family business into the most successful contracting company in London. But he likes to give most of what he makes away; the Century Opera House is just one of his favorite charities.

"Are Sean and Anna still engaged to marry?" Eliza asked me to make conversation when she noticed my oldest brother towering over the nervous, mousy Mr. Darlington.

"Yes, the wedding is this summer. And they have plans to honeymoon in France." I replied, filling her in.

"Speaking of Anna, and back to your lessons," Eliza continued, "I bet Oliver has been sure to denounce your objections about your vocal training." I rolled my eyes.

My brother's fiancée is Anna Del'Mar, and she is a chorus girl here at the Opera. It was all very romantic, how this place brought them together; and that romance still lives between them, as they are very much in love. She a wonderful girl, and was always kind to Eliza and I. The only part of Anna I don't care for is her family. And even then, it isn't her whole family I dislike.

Anna has a younger brother of mine and Eliza's age named Oliver. He is an understudy for the lead tenor and he has a beautiful, trained voice. If it weren't for that, I doubt I would have ever bothered with the boy. But I have this dream of leaving the ballet corps to join the actual cast, or at least the chorus. To be in the cast is to know success and something more than the ballet's mediocrity. I have a passable voice, which my musical Irish culture tends to insist upon, but nothing near good enough to ever get me past Mrs. Ipswich's standards.

So I asked Oliver to teach me to sing about three months ago, hoping that our bond through his sister and my brother would be enough to gloss over the issue of payment; because I would never be so bold as to ask for Sean's money for voice lessons. As it turned out, Oliver was very excited to teach me. It was only much later on that I realized him fawning over me was not in the student-teacher capacity.

"The little twit is much more concerned with me than my progress." I told Eliza, "It's enough to drive me _insane_!"

As I said this final word, closer to yelling than was appropriate for a company meeting, the lights suddenly dimmed and a hush fell over us all. Then a quick, jarring peal of crazed laughter rent through the auditorium as the electric lights switched off entirely. There were no windows along the walls, and the darkness was quite complete.

There were cries of "a ghost!" and sobs from the smallest and most easily frightened girls before the lights clicked back on at the same time. Once our eyes adjusted to the harsh brightness, new screams and the sound of rushing feet replaced the calls of a phantom.

Up on the stage, hanging from a rafter and swinging innocently, was the most vicious looking noose I had ever seen. Everyone was pushing past one another to leave to chilling sight, and I was thankful Eliza and I had sat apart from the company. I noticed Mr. Clarke-Harris remove an envelope sealed with red wax from a pin on the noose, his hands trembling as though he had Parkinson's and his face so white you'd think he'd actually seen the apparition.

I felt Eliza grip my hand with her's, her palms sweating but her voice just as soft and calm as ever.

"It seems as though we have a Resident Specter." She said to me. I could only nod in response as we stood stock-still.


End file.
